Two meals a day ‘effective’ to treat type 2 diabetes

Only eating breakfast and lunch may be more effective at managing type 2 diabetes than eating smaller, more regular meals, scientists say.

Researchers in Prague fed two groups of 27 people the same calorie diet spread over two or six meals a day. They found volunteers who ate two meals a day lost more weight than those who ate six, and their blood sugar dropped. Experts said the study supported “existing evidence” that fewer, larger meals were the way forward.Timing important?Type 2 diabetes occurs when the body does not produce enough of the hormone insulin, which controls the amount of sugar in the blood, meaning blood sugar levels become too high.

If untreated, it can lead to heart disease and stroke, nerve damage, light-sensitive eyes and kidney disease.

About 2.9 million people in the UK are affected by diabetes, 90% of whom have the type 2 form of the disease. Current advice in the UK recommends three meals a day, with healthy snacks. Scientists at the Institute for Clinical and Experimental Medicine in Prague divided a group of 54 volunteers aged 30 to 70 with type 2 diabetes into two groups of 27 people. Volunteers were then given either a six-meal-a-day diet (A6) for 12 weeks followed by a two-meal day diet (B2), or vice versa. The study compared two meals with six meals – as the latter accorded with current practice advice in the Czech Republic, researchers said. Each diet contained on average 1,700 calories a day.Read more on http://www.bbc.com/news/health.